Frank Wolf

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield to a Member who will be so convincing, the next Senator, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Lighfoot]. (Mr. LIGHTFOOT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham].

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. There was no pressure. I said to Mr. Hall, ``You do the right thing, whatever the right thing is.'' Second, I do not have the confidence in the FAA to do this study and I wanted the National Transportation Safety Board, which is above and beyond the pressure of politics and Cabinet secretaries of whatever administration, to evaluate all the data--as I said, 15 other countries do it--and make a report back. I tell the gentleman it is the Safety Board that would make the report back to the FAA and the FAA would do whatever. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for bringing this to our attention. The air traveling public relies to a great extent on the quality of the training of our air traffic controllers. I assure the gentleman from Oklahoma I will work with him to assure that the final appropriation level provides adequate funding for this contract, while not undermining support for the MARC program in Minnesota. I believe this can be accomplished, and I will work with the gentleman to achieve that goal as we go through the process. I appreciate the fact that he was alert and caught this. I thank him very much. We will work together to solve the problem.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my distinguished colleague's remarks. The safety of our ports and waterways is of extreme importance, and this committee has always placed the highest priority on achieving a higher degree of safety. I note the gentleman's concern and assure him that the conference will weight it carefully in its deliberations.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WOLF. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak on the point of order. Mr. Chairman, I can concede the point of order. The provision is legislation on an appropriations bill. However, I would like to explain that the committee feels strongly that the Coast Guard should be more active in using this grant program to promoting safety, rather than simply sending checks out by formula, as is currently the case. I understand that this program must be reauthorized next year, and I would ask that the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble] take a look at the establishment of the discretionary grant program which will receive strong consideration by the subcommittee next year going to reauthorization. Such a program will not cost any more money, and it could improve boat safety, because it would put money where the problem is. Again, as the gentleman from Texas knows, we increased boat safety money by over 50 percent in this bill. We thought this way it would get the Coast Guard more involved to be much more aggressive working in the boat safety area.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me just reiterate and thank the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo], and the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], and let me pay tribute to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Coleman], who is retiring. This is the last bill he will be handling on the floor. He cannot be here because of a very serious illness in the family. Let me just also thank the gentleman from Minnesota for mentioning the staff. I would like to include all of those staff names in my extension, because all of the ones that he mentioned have done an outstanding job, and quite frankly, without the very capable, very competent, bright bipartisan staff, it would have been impossible to do this. I take my hat off, and want the staff to know that I personally appreciate the good work they have done.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In the interests of brevity, Mr. Chairman, and because everyone, including the staff, ought to be able to go home, I will include my remarks. Mr. Chairman, today I am proud to present to the House H.R. 3675, the transportation appropriations bill for fiscal year 1997. I believe this is a very good bill which will improve aviation and highway safety, provide essential funding for highways and other infrastructure improvements across the country, and maintain the Federal Government's commitment to help localities and Amtrak with assistance in their operating budgets. This is a balanced bill, created in a bipartisan manner under difficult budget constraints. Before I go any further, Mr. Chairman, I want to recognize the huge contributions of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Coleman] in putting together this bill, and past bills, in a truly bipartisan fashion. This will be the gentleman's last transportation appropriations bill, and I want to say how much I appreciate his diligence and hard work, and his true concern for transportation safety and infrastructure around this country. He will be sorely missed, and we all wish him well. As all of us know, Mr. Chairman, the coming fiscal year will be very difficult, as we continue to tighten our belt on the way to a balanced budget. This is even more painful with each passing year, because the easiest budget reductions have already been made. Yet this body has shown its strong and unwavering commitment to eliminating the deficit by the year 2002, so some continued sacrifices will be needed. Before I get into specifics of the bill, let me put the larger budget numbers in perspective. This year, our 602(b) allocation in new outlays is $11.4 billion, which is the same level as last year. This might not seem too difficult until you realize that just to fund things like the employee pay raise, normal inflation in employee medical insurance and other benefits, and general inflation in goods and services, the Department of Transportation would need $250 million more than it received in fiscal year 1996. And if you use the President's budget as the baseline instead of the current level of funding, even greater reductions are required, because the budget proposed a large increase in new outlays. Combined with the money we need to pay off debts from past years, our budget allocation puts us $359 million in outlays below the administration's request. So very difficult choices had to be made below the level of their request. This bill sets priorities with the limited resources we have available. What are those priorities? Safety: Maintaining and improving safety is the number one priority in this bill, above everything else. The recent aviation accidents have convinced many of us that more needs to be done, and there are other troubling signs as well. Fraudulent and unapproved aircraft parts now get inside our commercial airliners all too often. And our aging air traffic control equipment raises concerns. Last year, air traffic centers all over the country experienced breakdowns in important radar and communication systems. And air traffic controllers are getting stretched thin as air traffic increases without consistent growth in staffing. To deal with these problems, the bill before the House today raises funding for air traffic control operations by about 6 percent, providing funds for 250 additional air traffic controllers and 373 new staff in aviation safety inspection and oversight. The bill also adds $139 million, not in the President's request, for new air traffic control equipment and systems to improve safety and airway capacity. Because of the extremely serious questions surfacing now over aviation safety and the FAA's oversight, the bill appropriates $2.4 million for a blue-ribbon commission to perform a comprehensive review of aviation safety, financing, and acquisition. Over the past few weeks, we've seen FAA inspectors and the Transportation Inspector General testify before the House and Senate about safety problems. We read about internal FAA memos raising safety alarms which go ignored by management. And we know how long it takes the FAA to procure and install new safety equipment. These problems must be addressed in a comprehensive, non-political and professional way. This high level commission will be bipartisan, and will have adequate funding to analyze in-depth the aviation safety situation in the United States, the FAA's financing problems, and its organization. I intend to offer an amendment to the FAA authorization bill which provides the authorization for this commission when that bill is before the House later this summer. The chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee agrees with me on this approach. He supports this language, and I am pleased that the appropriations bill provides funds for this important activity. And we must do more in other safety areas as well, or at least hold the line in the face of oncoming budget cuts. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], for example, performs critical work in research and public education to make our highways safer. Earlier advances in reducing highway fatalities in this country have slowed in recent years, and in some states, fatalities are going back up with repeal of the national speed limit a few months ago. So the Committee bill places priority on protecting NHTSA's budget, and the related motor carrier safety grants program in the Federal Highway Administration. Similarly, the second highest number of transportation fatalities in this country occur on our Nation's waterways, and we have received strong appeals from the States to raise funding for boating safety. So the bill raises funds significantly for this program--a 50 percent increase--and requires the Coast Guard to take a more active posture in helping to reduce boating deaths around the country. Current Operations: The bill also tries to maintain funds for the various operating budgets, and for operating grants, at close to last year's levels. We do not have the resources to start major new initiatives. But we have tried to maintain the current level of operations. Coast Guard operations is funded at approximately last year's level. Transit operating assistance is at the 1996 level of $400 million, which was difficult since the budget resolution passed by this House assumes that we phase out these grants. And Amtrak operating is at the budget request level. To enhance safety, the bill provides a 6 percent increase in FAA operations, but to help finance the increase, we include $30 million in FAA user fees. These funding levels will maintain current levels of operations except at the FAA, which will be increased. Investing in Infrastructure: The bill places a high priority on investing in the Nation's infrastructure. With great difficulty, we have found a way to finance the federal-aid highways program at the current level, which will provide funds for road construction in every State. Once again this year, we have included no highway demo projects in the bill, allowing us to put more resources into the hands of the States to decide themselves which projects have the highest need. Likewise, we are not earmarking funds for airport construction grants. Regarding the Central Artery highway project in Boston, we considered placing a cap on the total cost of that project this year, due to the spiraling costs. However, we have recently received information and assurances from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Department of Transportation that the program is now under control. So although we will continue to monitor this project, I am pleased with the progress made at this time, and the bill includes no provisions restricting funds for this project. Mr. Chairman, we have tried hard to minimize reductions in capital programs, but that has not been possible in every program. The proposal includes $4 billion for transit grants, the same as the current level. It includes $1.8 billion for FAA facilities and equipment, essentially the same as the budget request. It includes approximately the same level of funding as last year for Coast Guard acquisition, although additional resources will be available to augment their appropriation through sales of Coast Guard airplanes and shore stations which are no longer needed. Two capital programs have been hit harder than others in this bill, and they are very good programs. These are airport grants and Amtrak. We provide $1.3 billion for airport grants, 4 percent below the administration's request and $150 million below the 1996 level. Likewise, Amtrak capital programs are funded at $200 million, a large reduction from $345 million provided for 1996. In addition to this appropriated level, Amtrak has just under half a billion dollars in the bank that it can use during the next year to fund such high priority items as electrification and procurement of high speed trainsets. This level of funding does not prejudice Amtrak from receiving consideration for funding in future appropriations bills. I know these reductions will cause some Members concern, and I agree that these are good and meritorious programs. If there is any way to raise the figures for Amtrak and airport grants as we go through the process without harming safety programs or other critical needs, I am open to those suggestions. We have to make the difficult cuts as well as the easy ones, and I know these are difficult. Finally, the bill is very clean of extraneous legislative provisions, and we have tried to work with the legislative committees to ensure their support for the bill. To my knowledge, the rule just adopted addresses the remaining concerns of the legislative committees. There are no major controversial policy changes in the bill. Therefore, I believe the bill can move forward without delay, and without undue controversy. Mr. Chairman, I believe this is an excellent and balanced bill that puts an emphasis on our highest responsibility--protecting and enhancing transportation safety. From a financial standpoint, it is the best we could do given the budgetary circumstances we are under. It was developed in a truly bipartisan fashion, and received little controversy or debate at either the subcommittee or full committee levels. I believe it deserves the support of this entire body, and I ask for its approval. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the following material: [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH26JN96.000 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH26JN96.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH26JN96.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH26JN96.003 Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 3675, making appropriations for the Department of Transportation and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1997, and that I may be permitted to submit tables, charts, and other extraneous material.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I do not even know what to say. I feel so bound up inside about what we are doing tonight. This is fundamentally an evil group of people. This is the evil empire of modern times. They have Catholic priests and bishops in jail as we now speak who are being tortured. They are torturing Buddhist monks and raping Buddhist nuns. They have more slave labor gulag camps than they had when Solzhenitsyn wrote ``Gulag Archipelago.'' They were selling AK- 47's and shoulder missiles that could take 747s out of the sky in Boston, in Chicago, or in L.A. This is a fundamentally evil group of people, and I worry that 3 or 4 years from now we will have to deal with those people on a military basis. I wish we had a better piece of tandem legislation. The piece of tandem legislation does not do. MFN? If they get it, fine, but we should have abolished the People's Liberation Army and done all these things that are important. The last thing is, having served here since 1980, no Member of Congress would have had the guts or the courage to come to this floor during the 1980s, when Scharansky was in Perm Camp 35 and Sakharov was under house arrest, no Member of Congress would have had the guts or the courage to stand up and say that we should have given the Soviet Union MFN. And now we are just clamoring to give it to a regime that is the evil empire number one of this world. I oppose the rule, but the rule is important. I just oppose MFN. I think all of us have to ask ourselves, and the gentleman from New Jersey, Chris Smith, said it better than anybody, what threshold do we have in our own conscience that will make us finally say enough is enough? If they continue to do next year what they have done this year, raping nuns and imprisoning bishops and priests, what will be enough is enough? Each person should ask their own conscience that because we will have to deal with this issue again.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I had spoken yesterday and I was not going to speak again today, but something came up, I wanted to speak. Bill Emerson and Tony Hall and a few of us are part of a covenant group. We met every Tuesday in the chapel. In fact, as we just broke up, a group of us, the whole meeting was on Bill. Somebody sent flowers that were on the altar today for Bill. Somebody else brought and put on all the chairs a jersey for all of us in the group from Bill. Bill was a committed Christian. Bill loved Jesus as much as he loved anything else. So I just want people to know, and I can speak personally from having listened to Bill for the last several years, he loved Christ. He knew that when he died, where he was going, that he was going to Heaven to be with the Lord. Bill was somebody whom everyone loved on both sides, and those in our group, Tony Hall and our group, kind of transcend it. In fact, we had greater loyalty in our group to the individuals in the group than we actually had to our parties. We worked together on many issues, and we are going to miss Bill an awful, awful lot.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I do not know. I do not know if they are or not. We have pictures of them. It is hard to say why.

Mr. WOLF. And I would be voting for it and the gentleman would be voting for it and we would be pushing trade.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, this is such an important point. Congressman Chris Smith and I visited the gulag that Natan Scharansky was in. The fact is we hollered out that we were Congressmen from the United States and we met with 21 of the men. In fact, we interviewed, on camera, an interview with Natan Scharansky's cell mate and that night, late into the night in the Ural Mountains in this gulag, the men said, and I had forgotten it, but you triggered it, the men said precisely what you said. We gave the men Bibles and we started to ask them questions. All of the men said they knew of the statements that Ronald Reagan had made, and I do not understand how they got it in there, and it gave them hope and encouragement and by us speaking out, by Ronald Reagan speaking out, they were bold and solid. The gentleman said to Natan Scharansky, when Natan Scharansky was exchanged, Natan Scharansky was to walk across the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin and the Communists told Natan Scharansky to walk straight. What Scharansky did is he walked zigzag. He walked this way on the bridge and that way on the bridge and that way on the bridge and that way on the bridge, and he denied the Communists for the very reason that you said, because we gave Scharansky and we gave his cell mate and we gave those people hope. The gentleman is exactly right. If we had the same type of rhetoric coming out of the White House, the language that Ronald Reagan used, we would solve this problem. The Chinese would stop persecuting Christians, stop persecuting priests and ministers and Buddhist monks, and you are exactly right.

Mr. WOLF. I will, and I appreciate the gentleman taking out this special order, Mr. Speaker. I think he is absolutely right. This is, whether we like it or not, a fundamental moral issue, perhaps the overriding one internationally that this Congress will have to address. As the gentleman said with regard to human rights, as we vote on this issue, we should think of several things: There are more slave labor camps in China today than there were in the Soviet Union, and we all remember Solzhenitzen's book, Gulag Archipelago. I was in one of those camps, Perm Camp 35, with the gentleman from New Jersey, Chris Smith. They are very grim places. And yet Members should know, the world and the body should know, that there are more slave labor camps in China than there were in the Soviet Union during the heyday of the Soviet Union. Second, there are more individuals in those gulags, slave labor camps, logi camps, than there were in the Soviet Union. Also, they make goods, they make supplies, they make socks; they make different items like that for export to the United States, in competition with American workers. As the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] has said many times, we lose more jobs than we gain. The gentleman from New Jersey and I were in Beijing Prison No. 1, where we saw a number of Tiananmen Square demonstrators working on socks and plastic jelly shoes for export to the United States. They had little golfer insignias on the side of the socks. What the gentleman from California said is true. This is driving American jobs, and it is also, I think, fundamentally a major moral issue: Do we want to purchase the goods made with slave labor out of a gulag camp so we can get a better buy? I think the American people are saying no. Second, I think there is major fundamental religious persecution going on in China, perhaps more than any other place in the world. Everyone should know, no one should say I did not know, that is why I voted for MFN. Today, there are Catholic priests and Catholic bishops in jail for worshipping and practicing their religious faith. Some have been in jail for years, not 6 months, not 9 months, but for years. There are also evangelicals who are in jail. Almost every week Protestant house churches are raided and many times the people are picked up, arrested and sent into the logais and the slave labor camps and the gulags or in prison. so we have numerous, both Catholic priests, Catholic bishops, and Protestant pastors arrested and sent to jail. We also know, and the gentleman I think mentioned it and knows as well as anyone, Tibet has been plundered by the Communists in China. They have abused and imprisoned and tortured Buddhist monks. They have also done horrendous, horrible things to Buddhist nuns. They have plundered Tibet, so we know what they have done. They are also now in the process of persecuting those of the Moslem faith in certain provinces in China. So they have gone after the Catholic priests and bishops, they have gone after the Protestant pastors, they have gone after the Buddhist nuns and priests, and now they are going after the Moslems. So from a religious persecution issue, this country is number one in persecuting people. Third, we know that they sell body parts. When they kill people in their prisons, they line them up, and we have this on film if any Member wants to see it, they line them up, they invite crowds to come in to watch, they put pistols at the back of their heads, and they shoot them, they fall to the ground. Trucks and ambulances come and take them away. They take them to hospitals and they take their kidneys out and their corneas out for transplantation, for sale to people in the West, $35,000 per kidney. So they have a major business of executing people, taking their corneas out, taking their kidneys out for transplantation.

Mr. WOLF. Yes, we do know that.

Mr. WOLF. We know that for a fact, and we have pictures of it, taking place as late as February of this year. Last, before I get to the last one I would mention, we also know that they were so barbaric that they were trying to sell AK-47's and shoulder missiles to street gangs in L.A., near your area, which would have been used to kill innocent people, and we also know that the People's Liberation Army was behind this and the top leadership of those companies are people who are connected to the leaders in Beijing. I mean they were selling AK-47 weapons, assault weapons and also shoulder missiles that could take a 747 aircraft down coming in at any airport. Last, let me cover something with regard to human rights. In the 1980's, and I know the gentleman was in the Reagan White House in those days, writing speeches for President Reagan. In the 1980's, the gentleman knows that no Member of Congress would have ever come to the floor of the House, no person in the Reagan administration would have ever gotten up and said that we should have granted MFN to the Soviet Union when Sakharov was under house arrest in Gorky and Scharansky was in perm camp 35. No member of the administration, no Member of Congress on either side would have ever been in support of granting MFN for Russia, and now we see the granting of it for China. My closing comment is, I would like to read to you a statement by Elena Bonner, who was the wife of Sakharov on the MFN status in China. Her marriage to Sakharov changed Elena's life. She took early retirement as a disabled war veteran to devote herself to Sakharov. She was Sakharov's ambassador to the world at large. She represented him at the 1975 Nobel Peace ceremony in Oslo. She reported on her visits into Italy and America, was exiled in January 1980. She served as a sole link with Moscow and the West until 1984, when she too was barred from leaving Gorky. In August of 1994 she was tried by a Gorky court, found guilty of anti- Soviet agitation and sentenced to exile. So I will submit her entire bio for the Record at this point. Elena Bonner--Biography Elena Bonner was born on February 15, 1923, in Merv, Tadjikistan. She grew up in the restless, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Hotel Luxe on Gorky Street, which lodged important foreign Communists working in Moscow. Her father, Gevork Alikhanov, was a prominent Armenian Communist and a secretary of the Comintern, the ``general staff of the world revolution.'' Her mother, Ruth Bonner, was born in Siberia in 1900, joined the Communist Party in 1924, and was dedicated to bringing culture to the masses. Elena's childhood sweetheart, Vsevolod Bagritsky, lived only a couple of blocks away. (He was killed at the front in 1942, shortly before his twentieth birthday.) Elena's life as a Moscow schoolgirl ended abruptly when her father was arrested in May 1937. Ruth moved with her two children to her mother's apartment in Leningrad but did not escape her fate. She was arrested later that year and sentenced to hard labor as the wife of a traitor. Elena became a proficient survivor. She finished high school in Leningrad, volunteered as a nurse when war broke out, was wounded twice, and was honorably discharged in 1945 as a lieutenant and a disabled veteran. After two years of intensive treatment, the loss of vision caused by her wartime injury was brought under control, and she enrolled in the First Leningrad Medical Institute. After graduation, she worked as a pediatrician, a district doctor, and a free-lance author and editor. She married Ivan Semyonov, a classmate from the medical school, and, ignoring warnings that childbearing could endanger her life, gave birth to a daughter, Tatiana, in 1950, and a son, Alexei, in 1956. (Elena and Ivan separated in 1965). She succeeded in reestablishing contact with her mother as the war was drawing to a close. It was only in 1954, however, that Ruth was exonerated, granted a special pension, and informed that her husband died in confinement sometime in 1939. (It took another 52 years for the truth to be revealed--four years after Ruth passed away, Elena gained access to the KGB files and learned that her father was executed in 1938.) Ruth was also assigned an apartment on Chkalov Street, comfortable by Soviet standards. This apartment became Elena's home and in 1971 it was here that Andrei Sakharov moved in. Elena paid her respect to the memory of Vsevolod Bagritsky by putting together a book of his diaries, letters, and poems, which was published in 1964. She mingled with the generation of writers and artists who has been inspired by the post-Stalin thaw, but she also helped prisoners and their families. Elena met Andrei Sakharov in October 1970 when both were attending the trial of human rights activities in Kaluga. They got to know each other better in December while defending Jews sentenced to death for attempting an escape from the USSR in a hijacked plane. By August 1971 friendship turned into love, and in January 1972 they formally registered their marriage. The unlikely match between a reserved Russian physicist and a scrappy, streetwise Armenian-Jewish physician endured. Her marriage to Sakharov changed Elena's life. She took early retirement as a disabled war veteran and devoted herself to Sakharov, serving as his chief of staff and secretary as well as cook and bottle washer. She also became Sakharov's ambassador to the world at large. She represented him at the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo; reported on her visits to Italy, France, and America; and after his January 1980 exile, served as his sole link with Moscow and the West until May 1984, when she too was barred from leaving Gorky. In August 1984, she was tried by a Gorky court, found guilty of ``anti-soviet agitation'' and sentenced to exile. By then she already had a serious heart condition and was in urgent need of surgery. In 1981 Elena and Andrei went on a successful hungerstrike to secure the right for their daughter-in-law to join her husband, their son Alexei, in the United States. But it took three hungerstrikes by Sakharov, totalling almost 200 days, for Elena to gain permission to travel to US in December 1985 for open heart surgery. She returned to Gorky in June 1986 with six bypasses, to Andrei and to indefinite exile. But a love story deserves a happy ending--on December 15, 1986, a telephone was installed in their Gorky apartment. The next day it rang for the first time, and Mikhail Gorbachev personally asked the Sakharovs to return to Moscow. They arrived at the Chkalov Street apartment on December 23, 1986. The curtain was raised for the next act. Since Andrei Sakharov's death in December 1989, Elena Bonner has continued the campaign for democracy and human rights in Russia. She joined the defenders of the Russian parliament during the attempted coup of August 1991, and lent her support to Yeltsin during the constitutional crisis of 1993. She writes frequently for the Russian and American press. She has campaigned tirelessly in defense of self- determination for the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and for all the peoples of the former Soviet Union. Dr. Bonner has published a number of books in the United States and in Russia. Dr. Bonner has two children and five grandchildren, all of whom live in the United States and whom she comes to visit from Moscow. But this is what Dr. Bonner said in a letter to me the other day. She said: June 17, 1996. I believe it is dangerous to grant the most favored nation status to China, while mass-scale violations of human rights are taking place there, confirmed by many authoritative international human rights organizations. The United States possesses only one real mechanism for protection of human rights in other countries--granting or not granting such status. There should be no double standards in this issue and there should be no double standards for protection of human rights no matter in which part of the world. More than 20 years ago Andrei Sakharov has addressed the U.S. Congress with appeal to introduce the Jackson-Vanik amendment and by doing this to confirm commitment of your country to the human rights cause. Today, I dare to warn American legislators against hasty refusal from the Jackson- Vanik amendment. By giving up this amendment, the U.S. Congress, in my mind, is going to lose completely its influence on human rights situations in any part of the world and will practically admit that protection of human rights is no longer a matter of priority and a long-term goal of the Congress and the U.S. people. Elena Bonner. So I think Doctor Elena Bonner has said it and said it well. I will tell the gentleman too, if he looks at the surveys, the American people are overwhelmingly against granting MFN to China. So while it may be a close issue in the Congress and certainly gone, lost in the administration, the American people agree with the position of the gentleman.

Mr. WOLF. Can the gentleman imagine the feeling that would roll through China if they found out that the United States House of Representatives, the people's body, voted to deny them MFN? Can you imagine how the dissidents would feel? Can you imagine how the prisoners in the gulags in China would feel? The gentleman is exactly right. I hope that we defeat MFN when it comes here. I know they are going to get MFN because President Clinton is going to give it to them, but if we defeat it, the gentleman is right, the message that we will send through China to the dissidents will be the same message of the 1980s. Do you remember the rally that was held on the lawn from the Capitol down to the Washington Monument on that Sunday for those of the Jewish faith who had been persecuted? Do you remember the hundreds of thousands that came? If we could not that for those who are suffering in China, can you imagine the difference that it would make?

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise to make some personal comments about our colleague, Bill Emerson, who died Saturday night. Bill was a very honest, very decent, very ethical, very moral individual. As everyone knows, he had friends on both sides of the aisle. Republican and Democratic Members were very close to Bill personally. I was in a small group with Bill that met in the House chapel every week. In the group are Republicans and Democrats, both backgrounds. We would pray for each other in the group, we would pray with each other in the group. Bill was an inspiration all the years together and was an inspiration during the very difficult time when he found out about his illness. Bill Emerson had a very strong faith, a very strong Christian faith. He loved the Lord very deeply, and his faith was very, very strong. As the other people know and the Washington Post points out today, Bill and the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Hall worked together on the issue of hunger. The fact is Bill Emerson went to many places with Congressman Hall, from Sudan to Ethiopia, to Somalia and similar places. I can safely say there are many people, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people that are alive today on the continent of Africa and other places that would not be alive had it not been for the work of Bill Emerson working with Congressman Hall. Bill was totally committed to dealing with the issue of hunger and working together with Tony they did so much good that saved so many lives. The fact is the people whose lives were saved do not even know how they were saved or why they were saved, but I want the record to show there are millions who are alive today because of the work of Bill Emerson working with Tony Hall. Bill loved his wife and loved his family, his four daughters, his wife Jo Ann. He would often talk about them. They were the center of his life, and he loved his family very, very much. Many times that we would meet he would talk about his wife and about his family, and we would exchange those things, and I just want that to be on the record. Bill loved this institution. That should be on the record. He was a page in this House. I believe he was a page in the House during the time that there was an assassination attempt in the House of Representatives. I remember seeing the picture of the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Bill Emerson, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kanjorski, who were both pages. That is how long Bill Emerson goes back as being identified with this body. He loved history. I think he read every book about Winston Churchill. He probably knew more about Winston Churchill than any person I knew. He knew more about Abraham Lincoln than anyone I knew. He loved this institution. He loved the Congress and he loved the House and he loved history. Last, Mr. Speaker, I know he loved the Lord and he loved Christ. I know in his death he has gone to be with Jesus Christ. I include for the Record an obituary in the Washington Post.

Mr. WOLF

Mr. WOLF. That would be wonderful because I am very concerned about the man's life. He has been threatened and sentenced to actually death, so I think it would be good if the gentleman and Mr. Callahan would do that.

Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I want to thank the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Callahan] for doing that, and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Wilson], I thank him for bringing that to our attention.